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COEOUGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Covenant 
'm£ Other Poems 

By 
Dr. LOUIS SMIRNOW 

Author of 
"THE LAST DAYS OF ST. PIERRE", 
"THE MASQUE OF SHAKESPEARE", etc. 

With an Introduction by 
Professor William Lyon Phelps 




1922 
The Stratford Co. , Publishers 

BOSTON 






Copyright, 1922 

The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 

Boston, Mass. 



The Alpine Press, Boston. Mass., U. S. A. 



S^P 2S 1322 



C1AG83733 



Introduction 

I have been deeply interested in reading the 
Covenant and Other Poems by my friend, Dr. 
Louis Smirnow. I am glad that he has collected 
these verses into a volume, for they show genu- 
ine feeling, imaginative power, and consider- 
able metrical skill. What interests me particu- 
larly in these verses is their point of view; 
they are born of white-hot conviction, and are 
filled with true passion, a passion that in itself 
appears like a religion, and that speaks for and 
defends a race. 

It is exceedingly instructive to me, and it 
ought to be to many others, to enter into the 
spirit of these poems, and see how Dr. Smirnow 
is in a way the spokesman of thousands of 
people who no doubt think and feel in the 
manner expressed in this book. 

The poems naturally differ in value, but here 
and there will be found one of so much force as 
to arrest the reader's attention and compel him 
to think, and perhaps to revise some of his 



INTRODUCTION 

former opinions and to part with some of his 
most cherished prejudices. 

As one reader I am grateful to the author for 
expressing his ambitions and convictions with 
such fervour and poetic fire. 

William Lyon Phelps. 



Thanks are hereby giveu to The New York 
American, The Connecticut Magazine, The 
Great Southwest, The Jewish Forum, the Jewish 
Daily News, and other Magazines for their 
permission to publish some of the poems con- 
tained in this volume. 



dedicated to 
Justice Louis D. Brandeis 

Our Guiding Star. 

Lead, genial light, toward our latest goal, 
Lead to our re-diseovered land ; 

Be you the guardian of a nation's soul, 
The finger of God's guiding hand. 

And show the wanderer to the road he lost, 
Bring Israel to his home again, 
And let his blood no longer be the cost 
Of peace among his fellow men. 

By The Author. 



CONTENTS 



PARTI 

Page 

Appeal and Protest 

Lamentations 1 

The Covenant 6 

.D^i:n ^s -jnon iiSB' . ■ • . .7 
.Q^Dm «^D ba 10 

"He Who Watches Over Israel Does Not 

Slumber 12 

The Daughter of the Voice (^1p na) . 14 
The Spirit of Prophecy .... 19 
Now that the Hounds of War Are Loose 23 

Kishineff 25 

The Bloody Moloch of Christendom . . 27 

.n^^N 30 

The Song of The Jew . . . .39 
Am I My Brother's Keeper? . . .44 
Christmas 46 



CONTENTS 






Page 


The Dance of the Chief Rabbi of Kishiiieff 51 


Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin . 


. 53 


The Feast of Belshazzar . 


. 54 


Translated from the Yiddish . 


. 56 


The Passover of To-day . 


. 58 


When That Day Comes . 


.61 


.NTH tt'\sn-''c 


. 63 


PART II 




OEMS OP Nature and Travel 




The Song of the Mountains 


. 67 


The Lure of the West 


. 69 


I The Lorelei of the Prairies 


. . 69 


II Delusion .... 


. 70 


Ill Eureka .... 


. 71 


IV The Lake of the Valley of Navajo . 73 


V To the Lorelei of the West 


. 74 


An Ode to the West . 


. 75 


An Ode to the Alps . 


. 82 


An Ode to the Leman 


. 86 


Schreckhorn .... 


. 89 


The Mythen . . . 


. 91 



CONTENTS 






Page 


Mont Blane .... 


. 93 


The Tiake of Lucerne 


. 94 


Ships at Sea .... 


. 96 


PART III 




Lyrics, Parables and Miscf,tj,aneous 


Poems 


Sanctuary .... 


. . 99 


Salve Dea .... 


. 103 


God and Man — A Parable 


. 105 


The Angel 's Feast — A Parable 


. 110 


.C)^n^ ^JS hv mm . 


. 113 


A Snake Song .... 


. 118 


A Parisian Lay 


. 120 


Ships of the Sea 


. 122 


To An Acrostic . 


. 123 


" C 'Est Moin Qui Te Ka Lave 


. 125 


' ' I Am Dimpled, Young and Fair 


. 127 


Though of Silver and Gold 


. 128 


La Martinique 


. 129 


Cambronne 


. 130 


To Hon. Simon Wolf 


. 131 


Epigrams 


. 133 



I. 

APPEAL AND PROTEST 



Lamentations 

God has inflicted a scourge on his people, 
A botch and a sore and a cancerous grief, 
And the heart of the children of Israel is aching, 
For centuries aching, and finds no relief. 

God has forsaken the chosen, his children, 
Forgotten the covenant sanctioned of yore, 
Abandoned his plan and, recalling his promise. 
Imposed the misfortunes we so much deplore. 

A prey to the wild boar, the brute of the Arctic, 
A scapegoat abroad, the azazel at home. 
Plunder 'd and robbed and abused and insulted, 
From country to country we aimlessly roam. 

Beset by the wolves and the jackals of Europe, 
Attacked by the hounds on the African plains. 
In Asia harassed by ravenous vultures. 
The earth on its face no asylum retains. 

Hence whither we go and wherever we bivouac. 
The gleam of our hope is obscured in the night ; 

[I] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Wherever we sojourn and whither we wander 
We watch out in vain for the dawn of the light. 

In vain twenty centuries passed by the outposts, 
In vain we have anxiously counted the grains 
As the sand through the hourglass sifted and 

sifted, 
The night still as dark and as starless remains. 

The firmament of Israel is still unillumined. 
And dark overhead is the threatening vault ; 
The Promise of old, the prophetic Messiah, 
With the golden Millennium seems yet to halt. 

They halt on the outskirts of infinite nature, 
Where Time and Space in the embryo lie. 
Meanwhile the impious children of Israel 
Their God and Creator begin to deny. 

There is not a Deity, Science declares it, 
Nature is God and mankind is divine ! 
Thus Arrogance argues itself to the footlights, 
Egotistical man standing first in the line. 

And I, of the lowly the lowliest mortal, 
Dust of the dust, yea, worm of all worms, 
In error and darkness eternally stumbling, 
My doctrine the doctrine of error confirms. 

[2] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

The doctrine of error ! For who can encompass 
The secrets of heaven and infinite space? 
What man can define the eternal, the endless, 
Or tell what on planets and stars taketh place ? 

What man will explain the enigma of living, 
That riddle of riddles, the soul-centred light ? 
The breath of the lily, the snort of the mammoth, 
The glow of the star and the glowworm at night ? 

Can you hold in your hand the great mountains 

of Heaven, 
Or stop the deep streams as they flow to the seas ? 
Can you count all that live in the air and the 

waters. 
The sand on the shores or the leaves on the trees ? 

Rests the earth on your shoulders, the sun on 

your forehead ? 
Rolls off from your tongue the loud thunder 

amain ? 
Does the lightning proceed from your orbits and 

nostrils ? 
Prepare ye the snow or the hail or the rain ? 

Did your eye ever fall on the bound 'ries of 
matter ? 

[3] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Your mind e 'er conceive a beginning or end ? 
Were you present when earth and the heavens 

were forming? 
Say what of these secrets do ye understand ? 

Declare, if thou knowest, what Power created 
Both thee and the worm and all things drawing 

breath ? 
"What hand holds the governing forces of nature, 
And opens or closes the portals of Death ? 

Oh, I will strike up a note to arouse all the echoes 
That slumber in woodland and mountain and 

dale, 
So that, in clamorous soul-stirring accents. 
They may on the children of Israel prevail. 

With the horn at my lips, the great trumpet of 

genius, 
I '11 call to my people in all ends of the earth, 
That though wandering, stumbling, despised and 

forsaken. 
They must not forget of their glorious birth. 

Though complaining, lamenting, regretting, im- 
ploring, 

[4] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

They must not forget what their mission has 

been, — 
To suffer, to struggle, to teach and enlighten, 
And help all mankind in its strife against sin. 



[5] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



The Covenant 

* ' A NATION of priests and a holy people, ' ' 

This was the mark themselves and God have 
set; — 

As some great Architect designs a steeple, 
Or an hundred-tiered, sky-reaching minaret, 

To be admired and gazed at from below. 

And deemed unreachable as ages go. 

Were Mammon to supply its feet of clay. 

And Moloch lend his hands begrimed of shame, 

Or Greed and Hatred blaze thereto the way, 
Then were indeed the goal set all in vain. 
And nations could in unison proclaim 
The priestly nation as a thing profane. 

But no ! to reach the all-outreaching height 

Reared by the One who said "Let there be 
light," 

The people made a covenant to be 

A blessing unto all humanity ! 

To raise the fallen and uplift the weak; 

To give sight unto the blind, — undying hope 

To hopeless ones ! to diligently seek 

[6] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

The widow and the orphan who may grope 
In dire adversity, and succor them ; 
When Persecution rears its serpent head 
That strikes innumerable people dead, 

To then, like heaven's host, jump in and stem 
The fearful tide, that it may not be said 
That none defended Israel when he bled. 

(Pour Forth Thy Wrath Upon The Heathen). 

Pour forth thy wrath upon the heathen, Lord, 

The merciless, Tartar horde, 
And let thy brimstone on their heads alight. 
The terrors of thy night, 
The madness of thy day. 
Confusion and dismay, 
The Judgment of this hour. 
The force of thy nameless power, 
All horror, sorrow, pain. 
The plagues of Egypt, every bane 
Of humankind upon the Tartar horde 
Pour forth, GTod, our Lord. 

Pour forth thy wrath upon the heathen, Lord, 
The barbarous, savage horde. 

[7] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Thy tabernacle they destroyed, 

Thy bride of purity have they decoyed 

Into a den, polluted her. 
Made her unclean, — thy Torah and our 
trust, — 
Then underfoot, their blood astir 
With bloody strife, they trod her into dust ; — 
Thy Law, thy Light, thy Glory, God, 
Into the dust they trod. 
Wherefore we call on thee with trembling fear, 
Open the portals of the seventh heaven, there 
Our cry of grief to hear. 
Our prayer. 
Our despair : 
Send forth thy flaming vengeance, God our Lord, 
Upon the Tartar horde. 

Oh God of Israel, He who brought us out 
Of Egypt, gave our law and solved our doubt. 
Thy vineyard is despoiled, 
Thy purpose foiled. 
Thy enemy in triumph goes. 
Mocking at our woes. 
Thy children bleed 
And no one gives them heed ; 

[8] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

Therefore we call to thee, our fortress and our 
tower of strength, 
Withdraw the dams from thy sea of wrath and 
let 
Its waters overwhelm thy enemy at length, 

So that they ne'er henceforth forget 
That helpless ones are succored from above, 
That the despised possess Jehovah's love. 

The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the 

God of Jacob, hear ! 
Before thy awful throne the Seraphs in their fear 

Prostrate themselves and on their faces fall ; 
The stars do tremble, every circling sphere 
Quakes to its center listening to thy call, — 
The suns all crumble at the thunder voice. 
When through thy limitless Celestial Hall 
Thou makest known thy incontestable choice 
To show an inexorable hand 
In judgment of our land : 
Then let thy thunder smite thy foe. 
That he thy strength may know. 
Jacob they devour and his abode 
They burn and plunder ; on thy name 
They do not call, but down the road 
Of infamy and murder they advance, 

[9] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

With simitar and lance, 
Their barbarism to enhance, — 
Then let the fearful flame 

Of thy swift vengeance light upon the 
Tartar horde. 
So we beseech thee, God our Lord. 

(God Who Art Full of Mercy). 

God who art full of mercy, from thy throne 

Thou hear'st our supplicating tone, 

Our cries of anguish reach thy ready ear. 

Our endless woes dost ever hear. 

Then open to thy servants once again 
The sanctuary of thy heart, — 

Arrest the shafts in the hands of cruel men, 
And stay in its fatal course the dart. 

Let not thy enemy exult in shame 
While mocking at thy name ; 

They blaspheme thee and thine own house pro- 
fane, 

While trampling on thy people with disdain. 

A danger threatens us, behold the sword 

Above our heads is hanging by a cord. 

And men their passions whet and beasts their 
claws 

[lO] 



APPEAL AISTD PROTEST 

Whilst nations shackle us with cruel laws. 
Avert the danger, then, oh God our Host, 
Lest we are lost, lest we are lost. 
Be merciful to us, thy pity show. 
That we as ever may thy glory know. 
And to the world thy light, as e 'er before, 
We may deliver with the holy lore. 

That we may teach thy law to all mankind, 

The erring and the blind, — 
Thy Law 

That is without a flaw, — 
Give us the strength, oh Lord our Host, 
Lest we are lost, lest we are lost. 



["] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



"He Who Watches Over Israel Does 
Not Slumber" 

He who watches over Israel never slumbered, 

So the God's elect believed and still believe. 
And though his mortal enemies unnumbered 

On him fall their death-work to achieve ; 
Though locusts in their brazen malice plunder 

Israel's tent and shed his ancient blood, 
Though hands barbaric, tearing the scrolls 
asunder, 

Steep God 's word deep in the crimson flood. 
Yet none know better than Judea knows 
That God has power over Israel's foes. 

He who watches over Israel never slumbered, 
So some fear and so some others hope. 

When Pharaoh, by his deadly steel encumbered, 
Vainly tried with the returning sea to cope, 

When Antiochus Epiphanes was routed 
By the Maccabeus of the world 's renown, 

When tyrants met their doom, when they who 
doubted 

[12] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

Felt God's hand and saw His wrathful frown, 
Then they perceived that He who watches never 

sleeps, 
That over Israel God His vigil keeps. 

How can He who sleeps not, sleep? 

How can He who dreams not, dream? 
Does not the Shepherd ever tend his sheep. 

The Pilot steer the ship in the maddened 
stream ? 
Israel places not his trust in men. 

And earthly powers he does not invoke ; 
The Philistine, the Moor, the Saracen, 

Upon his head the sword yet never broke 
But that a greater Hand avenged the wrong, 
And gave the theme for another sacred song. 



[13] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



The Daughter of the Voice 

Loud blew the great ram's horn, 
And its deep blast through space interminable, 
From the zenith to the nadir went reverberant. 

When once again was born 
The Daughter of the Voice, discernible 
Among the constellations bright and radiant. 
Her body is the Milky Way, her head 
Rests in the Great Dog on a starry bed. 
Her feet repose upon the Archer's breast, 
Her hair floats through immensity. The rest 
Of space is her abode, the firmament 
Her purple robe, the sun's habilament 
Her garb, and on her brow a diadem 

Of stars ten-thousand rests. 
This is the Daughter of the Voice sent forthlo 
whelm 

Mankind with God's behests. 
Her tongue is a flaming sword, her eyes 

Are burning suns, her face is God's; 
Her words are thunder in disguise, 

[14] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

And all the universe quakes when her head 
she nods. 
This is the Daughter of the Voice that spake 

Thus to the children of the earth and said : 
' ' How long, Oh how long, will ye break 

God 's laws, men ! How long will your bread 
Be your brother's flesh, his blood your drink? 
Iniquity and Error on the brink 

Of your inhabitations dwell ; 
And in the midst is Treason, with every link 

Of Falsehood interlocked. The spell 
Of your great hatred, like a pall, 
On all the world doth fall — 
Dark'ning the threshold of the universe, 
Like Satan's inexterminable curse. 
Love is a stranger at your gate. 

And Wisdom knocks and findeth no response ; 
Light is barred out from your estate, 

And darkness harbored with all eagerness ; 
Reason and Justice are not for the nonce 

Embraced, but Dogma in her borrowed dress. 
Struts like a hireling through your towns. 
Hid by your black ecclesiastical gowns. 
I seek in vain the word which Man received, 
The Law which he professed to have believed ; 
In vain do I seek each witness that I sent, 

[15] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Each sign from heav'n that was my testament. 
Unto each Nation have I appointed a given task, 

Which in due season was to have been fulfilled : 
Rome gave I Power, that she may unmask 

Stern Nature, conquer every race instilled 
With savagery, and teach mankind to wrest 
From death their life, and from crude matter all 
its best. 

Greece gave I Beauty, that she may 

The senses please of a pleasant day. 

-(Esthetic virtues and subtle thought 

Is the stuff of which her crown was wrought. 
To Egypt gave I lore, that evermore 
She may treat the world to her priceless store. 
The Franks are champions of Liberty, 
Who bleed and die so that the world be free. 
The Saxons in the latter day have made 
The Iron Age of Commerce ; undismayed 
They plow the seas, the earth exhaust, 
That no advantages be lost. 
These come and go, as purpose needs, 

Upon the stage of life ; 
And thus the fire in the furnace feeds. 

And balanced is the human strife. 
But out of the nations of the earth, 

O Israel, I have chosen thee, 

[i6] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

To be the advocate of Truth, 
When peoples of inferior worth 

Groped darkly in obscurity, 

And worshipped Sin — an erring Youth. 
Now Sin has grown to hoary age, 

Though ever youthful in her guile, 
And Crime, aflame with mighty rage 

Pours all the venom from his vial. 
Then where 's thy mission, Judea, where ? 

How hast thou used the trust within thy 
hands ? 
Didst thou attempt my word of mouth declare, 

Or bring my standard into foreign lands ? 
Oh, in the thick and gloom of Night, 
Didst thou erect my beacon-light? 
Nay, thorns upon the path, 
Barbarians' hostile wrath. 
Pain, adverse circumstance, 
Eepulsed thee, sent thee hence 
Complaining of thy lot — 
Thy holy work forgot. 
What though a thorn be on the way, 
Though persecution holdeth sway? 
Does not God 's work lead to a better Day, 
Which would, like balm, thy pain allay ? 
Oh Israel, know thy mission once again, 

[17] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

And by the wayside do not fall; 
To teach Truth, Justice, Love and Light to men 

Be thy appointed, special call. 
Rouse from thy slumber, shake thy dream away. 
And enter on the great, eternal Day." 



.i8J 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 



The Spirit of Prophecy 

The word which came to me from the dismal 

mount 
Of Horeb where from out the hidden fount 
Of Wisdom, dry and unprofitable to all else, 
The Spirit of Prophecy quaffs prescience and 

compels 
Dumb stones their secrets to impart, 
Sapping out of earth's deep-centered heart 
Foreknowledge of events, rare foresight, more 
To be desired than all the world's combined lore. 
From out of the silence of the centuries 
The Word came like a wind among the trees. 
Like tempests on the waves, like thunder in the 

sky, 
'erwhelming me with this o 'erpowering cry : 
''Arise thou from thy slothful indolence 
And go to the abodes of men ! Rank arrogance 
And self-conceit will sneer and laugh in scorn. 
But say unto them the man is yet unborn 
Who laughs and does not weep in consequence ; 
Who spends and rues not his extravagance ; 

[19] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Who, spitting venom, does not swallow some ; 

Who spreads a pest and suffers not therefrom. 

Say unto them : A prophet shall arise 

Of lowly birth, clad in the modern guise, 

But armed with the old spirit of prophetic sight 

Which penetrates the all-impenetrable night." 

And further saith the Word which came to me 
From Horeb with the Spirit of Prophecy. 
"Arise and go to the nations of the earth 
Declaring : There among you, low of birth 
And mean in origin, a country lies 
That scoffs at God and His authority denies. 
Its life is half barbaric and its ways 
Have prototypes in medieval days. 
Cruel its laws and crude its government, 
Its courts a jest of savage merriment; 
Bribery and usury there holdeth sway. 
While truth and liberty are led astray. 
Chained to a rock the true religion lies, 
A captive in unmerited disguise. 
While foul Idolatry, the ancient pest. 
Is deeply cherished in this nation 's breast. 
But from the center of its depth, before 
The hand on the Centurial clock explore 
The face, a great convulsion shall upheave, 
And shake the land 's foundation to retrieve 

[20] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

Its foregone wrongs ; the agony of death 

Shall seize this monster in its length and 

breadth, — 
This double-headed octopus whose heart 
In Europe is confined, whose bulky part 
In Asia resteth, and whose frigid tail 
Lies in the arctics whence the icebergs hail. 
Its bowels will be gnawed by inner strife. 
And everywhere rebellion will be rife. 
Its one head by a plague will be attacked, 
Its second by the enemy will be sacked ; 
One tenth part of the first will fall in death, 
The second, plundered erst, will in the breath 
Of a conflagration be consumed, 
As once it was, that life be not resumed 
For a year and a day. Then in the wilderness 
The nation will cry out in its distress, 
But it will not avail. Woe be to 
The city, the mother of bandits, that grew 
Fat upon the blood of the innocent. 
Woe to the city grown rich and opulent. 
To Babylon, a harlot 'mong harlots, be woe. 
For out of her own craven heart will grow 
The Terror which will smite her and enslave 
Her, finally to rise above her grave. 

[21] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Her poison also gives the antidote, 
Her rancor, laying low whome 'er it smote, 
Will back rebound upon her head, 
And number her with the dead!" 



[22] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 



Now That the Hounds of War Are Loose 

Now that the hounds of War are loose, 

Ajid the mantle of Death is spread in the sky, 

While the sword and the cannon will offer no 

truce, 

And the earth through blood will cease to be 

dry; 

Ruin, Pestilence, Famine, black spectres and 

grim, 
Their skeleton-arms will stretch forth in the dim 
Obscure darkness to seize on their prey, 
May they find the true foe, so we pray, 
May they grasp the real foe that makes sorrow 
and woe, 
And renders for myriads a night of their day. 

May the agents of Vengeance discover the camp 
Where Corruption and Vice and Iniquity 
dwell, 
Where the old feudal tyranny reigns, and the 
lamp 
Of the world is extinguished, the deep-sound- 
ing knell 

[23] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

In the steeple resoundeth a dirge every eve 
For the corpses which daily the grave doth 
receive ; 
Oh, ye agents of Vengeance, take heed 
Of the thousands of victims who bleed 
On the altar of Crime, irrespective of time. 
Take heed and repay to the culprits their meed. 

Chains, chains of the exiled ring sharp in the air, 

As over the snow-mounds they wearily go. 
Blood, the blood of the innoccent calls every- 
where, 
And would not be silenced whatever you do : 
Gaunt the jackal howls lone at the brink of the 

grave. 
And the vultures their carrion screechingly 
crave. 
While the hounds of grim War are at large. 
To sweep down in their terrible charge ; 
That jackal and vulture be fed on mountains 
and mountains of dead, 
The guilty, the craven, that debt must dis- 
charge. 



[24] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 



Kishineff! 

Grim, gaunt and snarling stands the jackal o'er 
the grave, 

Hungering for the dead beneath the sod, 
Where, shrieking with the wind and rising wave, 

He howls defiance both at man and God ! 

Far off the offing rolls the pirate ship 

That trained its hellish engines on the shore, 

Holding a city in its iron grip. 
And terror and rapacity in store. 

From out the east comes a maliferous breath 
And poisons many thousands through the land, 

"When pestilence, the staunchest friend of death, 
Leaves tracks as barren as the desert sand. 

So Kishineff, the foulest of the foul. 

The ghoul of all the ghouls that rob the graves, 
Stands obnoxious, like a thousand fiends that 
howl 

Perdition down among the hell-bound caves. 

[25] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

So Kishineff o'ershadows history's page, 

And stands a blot and shame to all the world ; 

The cursed name remains a curse to our age, 
A malediction by the devil hurled. 



[26] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 



The Bloody Moloch of Christendom 

Dumb with astonishment and stricken with 
despair, 
Deeply engulfed in most impotent rage, 

And bleeding at heart with my heart's last 

drop, 
I saw them, like the harpies from Olympus 
top, 
Swoop down with a force naught could assuage 
On Israel's tent, devouring, killing everywhere. 
With ravaging madness came the maddened 

mob, 
Dressed in a varied mottled garb. 
Clowns, apes and scoundrels from the depths of 

hell, 
Hordes on hordes of savages from places none 

can tell, 
Down from the ragged Caucasus heights 

Where Cossacks breed their hellish brood, 
Up from the valleys of the starless nights 

Where Slavish races sing slaves' interlude, 
From the Ural mountains in the north, 

[27] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

From every sea-shore, every valley, every den. 
Wild, howling Tartars issued forth, — 

Fiends in the outward semblances of men, — 
With rapine and fire and brutal force, 
Down on their destructive course. 
Oh, God of Justice, God of Reason, 
Are these thy instruments of vengeance or just 

wrath ? 
Smite us with thunder, let thy lightning seize on 

Thy servants, let the perilous path 
Down to Gehenna be as thick with us and ours 
As heaven is with stars, but save us from the 

pow'rs 
Of Russia's mob, which, vampire-like, 

Wastes all the blood it cannot drink. 
With cruel ferocity they strike 

Down ruthlessly the young and old, 
Thy aged patriarchs, Lord, they treat 
Indignantly, treading beneath their feet 
The hoary heads and beards as white as snow ; 
Thy daughters. Lord, they basely sink 

To depths of misery that never can be told. 
Wail, Israel, wail ! Woe to Judea, woe ! 
Here is a turning point in history, 
Here is the crowning point of Infamy ; 
Imperial Rome in all her cruelty 

[28] 



tr i m 0*1 • 0- n t m » pi"t M' - *» * f* " »> *M »>t \m »im m mf<< 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

Conceived not half this inhumanity. 
Hide, Sim, thy face. 
And thou, pale-faced Moon, 
Reigning at high noon. 
Forbear to look on man's disgrace. 
The stars shall be extinguished, every grace 
Of God may God in justice now efface, 
Because the world stood by 
And heeded not our cry, 
The world stood and beheld 
How innocents were felled. 

How infants ruthlessly were killed, 

E'en in their mothers' wombs, 
How thousand and ten thousand martyrs 
filled 
Untimely tombs, 
And yet the world said naught 
'Gainst all the carnage wrought. 
The Christian world professing peace. 
Professing love, professing tolerance, 
(Their bloody Moloch over all the land 
Presiding with a high and treacherous hand), 

Therefore may God in His infinite mercy cease 
To look upon this earth, but wither it with a 
glance. 

[29] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

.Q"'D"'«^ nb r- na n:2 n^yi ^2 n^3ni« ^so 
.n-'D-i'' — 

I AM the servant of the Lord, 

Come out of the wilderness of time, 
Out from the immensity of space, 
Adown the Milky Way, the ford 

Of heaven, where, with songs sublime, 

The angels cross the hemispheres; 

There where the rainbows interlace. 

Where stars are made, where years on 
years 
Are piled, past, present and to be, 
'Tis there abideth Prophecy. 
Red lightning there resideth, there 
The thunder's seat ariseth, while 
The surging waves of Chaos tear 
Encroaehingly at heaven's sides. 
Howling response at their denial 
Of entrance, as the raging tides 
Of sulphurous clouds in reeking foam 
Eise clear upon the spangled dome. 
Then out of the densest darkness came 
A voice that silenced all and made my soul re- 
joice ; 

[30] 



* ., t i ts h t rnt n it 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

"Peace, ye turbulent elements," and silence 

reigned, 
And all the hosts were in their wrath restrained. 
But suddenly tremendous thunder roared. 

And all the universe was filled therewith. 
Whilst lightning's flashes like a deluge poured 
From every side, the elements were all 
In turmoil, like a seething pot, 

When suddenly there was revealed to me. 
Built out of one vast ebon monolith, 
A glory and majesty that might appall 

The stoutest heart, though mine it frightened 
not, 
There was revealed to me 
The awful seat of PROPHECY. 
High on the clouds it lay, 
On sure and safe foundation, 
A thing of consternation 
To the stars upon the Way. 
Chaos and Confusion tumbled all around, 
And sulphurous fumes did saturate the ground, 
Whilst, as I stood astonied, I have heard 
These wondrous words which all the heavens 
stirred : 

' ' How desolate is now become 

My sweet-scented garden of roses ; 

[31] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

How doth the fiend destroy the calm 

Of the home where my first-born reposes ! 

' ' God made him triumphant of old, 
To lead all the nations in glory ; 

His fame and achievements were told 
In fable and legend and story. 

' ' He made him exalted and great, 

And raised him above all the races ; 

He made him the guard of His Gate, — 
The highest in all the high places. 

' ' He sat at the head of the feast. 

When nations have gather 'd around him; 
He rose like the sun in the east, 

And melted the fetters that bound him. 

' ' But now came the Boar from the North, 

Devouring the vineyard God planted, — 

The wild boar in hordes issued forth. 

Defying the rights Thou hast granted. 

"With cruelty never surpassed, 

With baseness and malice and treason, 

They crushed out the life to the last, 

And trampled on Justice and Reason. 

"The delicate woman lay dead 

On the highways for strangers to gaze on ; 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

Young children and infants were bled, 

Like lambs on the pastures they graze on. 

"And Israel's defenders lay low, 

Where tall, waving bulrushes flourish; 

O 'er the graves of the heroes will grow 
Coarse weeds full of venom to nourish 

"Fat worms and rank serpents and toads, — 
The souls of the bloody assassins, — 

For the victor shall fall in the roads 

As he learns, though too late, of God' 
lessons. 

"But now, with misfortunes increased. 
Sits Zion engulfed in her sorrow; 

By throes of great suffering seized. 

She fears the gray dawn of the morrow. 

"How solitary sitteth the queen 

At the threshold of various nations; 

She who sat great and serene, — 
A star to her eastern relations. 

"She weepeth alone in the night, 

And no one comes forth to console her; 

[33] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

She is sad and distrought in her plight, 

And none can be found to condole her. 

"In sackloth and ashes is dressed 

The beautiful daughter of Zion, 
For her children, aggrieved and oppressed. 

Are fallen a prey to the Lion." 

So ran the thunderous words that shook the 
world, 
Like the roaring of a thousand cataracts. 
And all in heaven in a vortex whirled, 

As if around the center of a storm; 
The ways of God and all his marvelous acts 
Being manifest in an infinity of form, 
I fell upon my face in fear and awe. 
Full well believing all I heard and saw. 
*'0h, wonder of all wonders," said I, "still is 

heard 
The prophet Jeremiah 's stirring word, — 
The grand old man, the exile seer, 
Who prophesied without regard or fear. 
Who told the truth, regardless of the kings. 
Foretelling of a thousand coming things. 
He first, he last, at all times he, 

[34] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

The master mind in prophecy. 

As on the earth lamenting Israel's fall, 

So now in heav'n he answers to the call ; — 

Bemoaning there Jerusalem's disgrace, — 

Here Israel's wanderings from place to place." 

' ' My master, ' ' said I, ' ' pray incline thine ear 

To one of the humblest stragglers of thy fold. 
I am a stranger in these realms, this sphere 
Is far removed from whence I hail ; 
There, upon the earth, doth gloom and cold 
And deepest ignorance prevail, — 
The darkness doth the night assail ! 
The sons of Israel wander still about. 

In darkness and in doubt ; 
From one end to the other of the globe. 

Clad in the mourner's robe ; — 
Driven from place to place, from town to town, 

Abused by every clown ; 
Insulted, robbed and murdered, bled to death, 

And poisoned at each breath. 
Oh thou, far-seeing seer who knowest all. 
From what has been to that which will befall. 
Declare it unto me, I pray, 
When will be the dawning of the Day 1 
From thy great seat of prophecy, 
This wondrous throne of ebony, 

[35] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Declare to me the secrets of thy soul ; 
When will our redemption be, 
What is Israel's destiny, 

And when will Juda come unto his goal ? 
Oh, conjure up both day and night, 
To give me this prophetic sight." 

To which came the reply, 
Out of the fathomless sky, 
With accompanying thunder and lightning and 

fearful noise, 
In Jeremiah the prophet's powerful voice. 
Whilst all the servants of the Lord stood 'round, 
With their heads inclining to the ground, — 
Silently listening to what he said. 
As if they were the armies of the dead. 
' ' My son ! Return and say unto all men : 

As surely as He teareth down so shall He build. 
The father faileth not his son, and when 

The proper time arrives then is His word ful- 
filled. 
The eagle carries her fledglings o 'er the crags. 
And in her guarded cave the she-lion shields 
her whelps. 
The young deer get their swiftness from the 
stags, 

[36] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

And every creature every other helps. 
Then can you doubt that God His children 

guards, 
Or that He anxiously His flock regards ? 
Return to the abodes of men and say : 

Thus saith God, through His prophets and His 
seers ; 
Surely there will come the Judgment Day, 

Three months elapsing, reckoning as many 
years 
By centuries as days, for thus is time 
Computed here in heav'n. Then every crime 
Shall be accounted for and every deed 
Adjudged. Assassins and murderers shall bleed 
From their own veins, and trebly lose the blood 

they spilled ; 
Poisoners shall drink the poison they distilled 
For others ; kings shall meet their doom ; 

But the just and upright shall go free. 
In God 's great universe there will be room 

For all who merit immortality, 
But they who merit not shall surely be destroyed. 
And Israel shall ascend ; they who annoyed 
Him, like a lamp so shall their life be 

quenched, — 
For God's own flock shall surely be avenged. 

[37] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Then Israel's mission plainly will appear, 
Dear to each heart, and as the sunshine clear. 
Peace, then, shall be the arbiter, and truth 
And love shall flourish in perennial youth. 

Zion shall be built again. 

And honored of all men ; 
God's Temple will arise, most wonderful and 
grand. 

Forever then to stand. 
Untouched and unassailed by mortal hand. ' ' 



[38] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 



The Song of the Jew 

' ' Oh, hear ye, Nations, give ear all ye men, 
To a song never uttered, nor written by pen. 
It is writ in the stars and was culled from the 

sun 
Long before the grey phantoms of ages begun. 
When Creation emerged from the womb of the 

Deep, 
And all nature awoke from Eternity's sleep, 
When the sun limned the sky with the first rosy 

mom, 
Then all Birth saw me first of the first to be born. 
And I builded for Pharaoh great cities of yore, 
And his pyramids greater than any before ; 
And I cast my mute harp in the Babylon stream, 
And I served mistress Rome in her glitter and 

gleam : 
Alexander and Caesar and Titus accurs'd 
Drank the blood from my veins to diminish their 

thirst. 
I have taught the Great Law to all peoples, in 

sooth, 

[39] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Freely shedding my blood in defense of the 
Truth; 

When the nations served idols of horror and 
shame, 

Then I spoke and proclaimed the ineffable Name ! 

All abominations I fought, and I conquered 
them all. 

And of Mammon and Moloch accomplished the 
fall. 

The All-Justice I taught and the law of the 
Eight, 

When the world only knew and regarded but 
Might. 
' ' When the earth was yet young and mankind 
newly born, 

And the dark veil of History just had been torn. 

When the fiercest of passions and murder and 
strife 

Had disfigured the features of primitive life, 

Then I came full of pow'r, like the north wind 
of old. 

And upheld the Commandments to numbers un- 
told ; — 

'Thou shalt not,' I shrieked, like the lion I 
roared, 

And I curs 'd and I threatened, I begged and im- 
plored, 

[40] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

Till the nations all heeded my precept of love, 
And feared the great wrath of Jehovah above. 
''I beheld how great empires and kingdoms 

arose, 
And I saw their decline, and the pride of my 

foes 
I saw humbled to dust and their cities 

destroyed, — 
Even Rome could not long her destruction avoid. 
Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, 
And Media, Carthage, all haters of peace. 
The Philistines, Celts, Huns, the Goths, Romans 

and Gauls, 
All have vanished and left only tottering walls. 
Nigh the whole world was lost, when to succor 

and save. 
To half mankind an Ideal, to half a God I gave. 

' ' But now as I sit here, alone and forlorn, 
Very often I wish I had never been born. 
For of all of my travail, my sorrow and pain, 
Oh, can ye, nations, discover my gain? 
Ye tread on my beard and ye spit in my face. 
And ye clothe me in chains and the badge of 

disgrace. 
And ye come and advise me to lose myself quite. 
And assimilate with the dark shadows of night. 

[41] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

As well to exhort the Gulf Stream to be mixed 
With the cold, icy ocean wherein it is fixed ; 
Or advise in the heavens the great Milky "Way 
To be lost in the stars that most everywhere lay. 
* ' Oh, no ! If true justice still lingers on earth, 
You will give me the home that was mine from 

my birth. 
Return me the land where I battled and fought, 
The land every inch of which dearly I bought. 
Very dearly I bought with the blood of my veins. 
Where I struggled for freedom and shattered my 

chains ; 
Where I strove with and conquer 'd wild races of 

men, 
Gog-Magog, the giants, I drove from their den ; 
Where I worshipped my God and expounded 

His Law, 
And where first the great light of His Wisdom I 

saw. ' 

"In that land were my fathers for ages in- 
terred, 
And the prophets and sages who lived by the 

Word. 
There the graves of my martyrs abound on the 

plains, 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

And the roads are yet strewn with my children's 
remains ! 

Every stone in that land is a tear from my eye, 

In its mountains still lingers the hreath of my 
sigh, 

In its forests my wailing can yet be discerned, — 

Lives a soul who would say thus : * I am not con- 
cerned'? 

Then return me my country! If justice yet 
dwell 

Here on earth, O return me, return my Beth-el !" 



[43] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



Am I My Brother's Keeper? 

"Am I my brother's keeper?" asked the man 
Just as the first crime and the world began. 
And when his brother's blood yet warmed the 

sod, 
He thought with vain words to deceive his God. 
' ' What hast thou done ? ' ' was asked in thunder 

sound, 
"Thy brother's blood cries to me from the 

ground. 
Be, therefore, banished from the earth that durst 
Yield naught to thee, a fugitive accurs 'd. 
The soil thou till 'st be barren in thy hands. 
As thou goest hungry through the many lands. 
With this mark on thy forehead to explain 
To man and beast the brother-slayer, Cain. ' ' 

"Am I my brother's keeper?" cries the lord 
Who wades, knee-deep, through his great 

treasure-hoard. 
In every age and every passing day 
Innumerable men are heard to say : 
' ' What care have I that others starve or die ? 

[44] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

Shall pity at my door forever lie ? 

Each for himself ; — concern themselves with me 

"Would none ; I therefore must indifferent be. 

This day bread have I eaten, wine I drank, — 

I loved and lived, — but whom have I to thank? 

None me therewith provided, — why should I 

Of earthly good to other men supply ? 

Tis all the same, so long I suffer not, 

If all the world by God shall be forgot, 

And I will sponsor be for none beside, 

But guard no hurt or harm to me betide." 

Oh, million-armed and million-headed Cain, 
How many brothers coldly have you slain? 
Pray, — will you say ? — how will you answer 

when 
The Great Judge His account will have of men ? 
What will you say when it is asked of you, 
"Where is thy brother, Cain, — what didst thou 

do?" 
Then on your forehead will a sign be placed, 
To mark the fratricide and the disgraced, 
And point you out to mankind and the brute 
As of foul crime the full and ripened fruit. 
Then even wild-beasts shall your flesh disdain, 
And you will live, repentless, in eternal pain. 

[45] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



Christmas 

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 

Peal after peal went forth from the organs re- 
sounding, 
And clear across the earth reached the jubi- 
lant song, 
Chimes' exquisite melodies rose and, from heaven 
rebounding, 
Stirred to its depths in prayer the worshipping 
throng. 
Gilded domes shone in splendor outdazzling 
the sunshine. 
And the altars in laces of gold were bedecked ; 
And of gold were the crosses, and many an en- 
sign 
Was wrought of rare fabric and satin select. 
And golden-mouthed preachers gold-sermons 
delivered, 
And gout-aristocracy listened them through ; 
Kings and Queens and their minions with pur- 
pose palavered 

[46] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

As they hymned of the Son of Man, faithful 
and true. 
It was Christmas the world o'er, and millions 
unnumbered 
Rejoiced in the birth of the Man-God, the Son ! 
It was Christmas, — the earth with deep snow 
was encumbered, 
And the cold grew yet colder in spite of the 
sun. 
To earth's outermost boundaries the bread-lines 
extended. 
Where ragged men begged all in vain for a 
crust ! 
And where, man against man, hunger-mad, they 
defended 
Their last shreds of life, although crushed to 
the dust. 
Deep the pit yawned beneath them, like chasms 
unmeasured, 
And hell stood wide open to welcome them all ! 
And the little ones whom the great Savior 
treasured 
Were come to the brink where to stand is to 
fall. 
And the widows and orphans were lone in their 
sorrow, 

[47] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

And Hunger and Grief stalked supreme in the 
lands, 
A signal of yesterday, a sign for the morrow, — 
Despair's ominous footprints engraved in the 
sands. 
But from church and Cathedral resounded the 
story 
In music unequalled of Him who was born ; 
To the Savior of men they sang Glory and Glory, 
While His image with diamonds and gold they 
adorn. 
Had they harked they could hear as on wings 
of the tempest 
In anger a voice from the heavens descend. 
Which thus spake with the thunder: "0 Satan 
still temptest 
The Lord thou, — and what can it bode or 
portend 
But destruction and death and the end of all 

things. 
And the price thy rebellion and arrogance 

brings ? 
And ye men of the earth and ye women of cul- 
ture. 
Who fall at a fetich and kneel at a shrine, 
Go, dwell with the wolf and be kin to the vul- 
ture, 

[48] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

But tempt not your God, lest His anger divine 
Shall devour you, — involve you in every dis- 
aster 
And east you for aye in the fiery sea ! 
Though ye build me great temples of rare ala- 
baster, 
And altars of gold ye erect unto me, 
Yet the words of the Lord and the works of the 
Master 
You consign to the depths of Oblivion's sea. 
Oh, answer and say what became of my teaching, 
And what of the seed that I sowed with my 
blood? 
The Light and the Truth which, through cen- 
turies reaching. 
Was to circle the world like the primitive 
flood? 
For when I am a-hungered, then give ye me 

meiat? 
Thirsty, and give ye me drink ? A stranger with 

bleeding feet, 
And take ye me in ? Naked, and clothe ye me ? 
Sick, and in prison, and visit ye me ? 
And Oh ! All the oceans of blood and the oceans 
of tears 
That these centuries past in my name ye have 
shed, — 

[49] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

How answer ye, vipers, beyond the frontiers 
Of the countries that reek in their garments of 
red! 
Shall I take for your answer the altars of silver, 
The gold-embossed symbols of Rome and of 
Greece ; 
The booty and plunder your pirates deliver 
As the price of your heaven, your ransom of 
Peace? 
Then woe to ye, men, and your lost habitations. 
For the Angel of Death shall inherit the 
earth!" 
And this is the Word for the ear of all nations 
On the glorious day of the Savior's birth. 



[so] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 



The Dance of the Chief Rabbi of 
Kishineff 

The Eussian mob, a frenzied horde, — 

The minions of the Czar, 
Came with the pike and knife and sword. 

Upon their warlike car. 

They spied the gentle Rabbi Chief, 

A venerable sire, 
And took to mock his pain and grief 

With song and tuneful lyre. 

They danced with him the dance of death. 
And made him join their gang ; 

And this the song, with bated breath. 
They and the Rabbi sang. 

' ' Oh Russia, we dance a dance 

That can no longer cease ; 
The devil weaveth this romance. 

Infernal friends to please. 

We're dancing, are dancing. 

[SI] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

" 'Tis human vultures dancing here, 

With an old bird ensnared ; 
Oh come, ye fiends of hell, appear ! 

Our work shall be compared ! 

We're dancing, are dancing. 

' ' The harpies danced to flute and lyre, 
When blood ran like the sea ; 

We dance the tune of sword and fire, 
And blood runs just as free. 

We're dancing, are dancing. 

"Oh, Russia, we dance thy dance. 

Beside thy open grave ; 
We dance away thy final chance 

Thy worthless self to save. 

We're dancing, are dancing. 

' ' We dance upon thy funeral pyre. 
That crackles now and burns ; 

Behold the red hand rising higher, — 
The Revolution turns ! — 

We're dancing, are dancing." 



[5^] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 



Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin 

It is counted, counted and weighed. 

The tyrant 's deeds 
Before the highest Judge are laid. 

Let him beware 
The awakened wrath of God, 

Who makes or breaks 
The universe with a nod. 

Mene, mene, counted are 

Thy days on earth; 
Thy works are weighed, O fallen star,- 

God knows thy worth. 
Thy kingdom shall divided be 

By heathen hordes; 
And all shall raise, insulting thee, 

Avenging swords. 



[53] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



The Feast of Belshazzar 

The king Belshazzar at a royal feast 

Sat wine-imbibing on his golden throne, 
Oblivious to the menace of the East, 

The raging Northern stress to him unknown. 
His ministers of state surrounded him. 

His wise men and magicians at his feet, 

His wives and concubines and all that sweet 
Umbrageous coterie that in the dim 

Half-limbus of uncertain favor dwell, — 
The courtiers, priests and flatterers who fawn 
Upon the monarch from the early dawn 

Until the sounding of the midnight bell. 
All in the palace sat or half reclined, 
Entertained most royally, feasted and dined, 
While song and mirth and laughter filled the 

air. 
And not a lip sighed forth a single care. 
But where the rich Damascus tapestry 

Adorn an arabasque red-granite wall. 
There, all in blazing light, a prophecy 

Appeared that, louder than a clarion's call, 

[54] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

Foretold the end of this great monarch's reign, 
As well as of his numerous servile train. 
But none the mystic letters understood, 
Nor was the king Belshazzar in the mood 
The language of the mystics to discern. 

The flaming Wrath that did before him loom 
Out of his orgies wild he could not learn, 

And knew not that it spelled the one word 
''DOOM." 



155] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



Translated from the Yiddish 

(Anonymous). 

Eat, my child, this bread and honey, 
Honey is like sugar sweet — 

After holiday your father 
May remember us to greet. 

Nestle closer to the bosom 
Of thy mother, dearest child, 

I alone must keep this feast-day. 
Woe is me, my pain is wild. 

Oh, thy father left and journeyed 
Somewhere far to earn his bread, — 

When I see our desolation 
I am seized with bitter dread. 

Yet perhaps will God have mercy, 

Sending us a little luck. 
That the year be not returning 

Which our hearts with terror struck. 

[56] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

Works so hard thy ailing mother, 
Not a moment free she feels, — 

Yet is she so poor and lonely 
That her veiy blood congeals. 

God allowing, I perhaps will 
Earn a little at my place, — 

Then I '11 make for my own darling 
Winter clothes 'gainst winter 's face. 

Then two little shoes I '11 purchase. 
Will be warm thy little feet; 

Eat, my child, this bread and honey, 
Honey is so very sweet. 



[57] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



The PassQver of Today 

Three thousand years and more 
Since on the sunlit shore 

Of the wide Red Sea we stood, 
A people liberated first, 
As the whilom shackles burst 
From off our limbs and fell, 
With many a ringing knell, 

To echo through the corridors of time ; 

While our great leader, in authoritative mood, 
Did split in twain the Sea, 
That we 
May pass o 'er harmlessly. 

It was a passing over, great, sublime, 
Than which in all man 's annals nought 
Was e 'er with so much purpose fraught. 
From bondage into Freedom's light, 
From servitude to kingly might, 
A thousand wrongs at last set right, 

Oh, what a great beginning then was made 
When young the world was, and when man 
Civilization's first syllable to lisp began, 

[58] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

As civilization's cornerstones were laid. 
Far into the future, then, the Seer did look 
And saw before him many a passing o'er 

For Israel, the greatest people of the earth, 
Many a precipice and many a raging shore 
To scale or span, or cross or ford, 
Many a well-nigh death, and many a great 
rebirth, 
Beset by many a savage horde, — 
This future people of the Book, — 
Until at last the vistas of his vision led 
Unto a field by joy and sunshine fed, 
Unto the haven of the bless 'd, 
Where God's annointed rest. 

So now in many lands where dwell 

The half of Israel once again it fell 

A wondrous passing o 'er to be recorded, 

Such as ten centuries have not afforded, — 

A passing from a barbarous state, 

From persecution and great hate, 

Pogroms and rapine, murder and strife, 

Unto new love and generous life ; 

Unto a new regime 

Whose very scheme 

By the Creator first was planned, 

[59] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

When 'er the rushing waters and the waves 
Of Chaos His great word went forth 
In thunder that chilled the nebulous froth, 
And star-dust into worlds congealed, 
The while His eye, all-seeing, scanned 

Infinity, thus saying : ' ' Let there be no slaves. 
But love of man for man shall be re- 
vealed. ' ' 



[60] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 



When That Day Comes! 

And when the hand of Time that marks ofe 
centuries 
Upon the universal dial shall once again 
Point to the matin hour 
When Israel's latent power 
Shall rise with might and main, 
Its former glory to regain, 
And yet new glories, still unknown, 
To lay before God's wondrous throne, 
Oh, may it be a time 
When universal crime, 
Deceit and infamy. 
And all ills of humanity. 
Shall be forgot. 
That not a single blot 
Would mar the new escutcheon 
That shall outblaze the blazing sun. 
Or if the Great Eye peradventure sees 

Continuance of wars and plagues and man's 
Inhuman policy to man. 
Oh, let them beware who shall transplant all 
these 

[6i] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Abominations to the sacred soil, — 
This evil deed will back on them recoil ! 
For at Jeshurun 's gate the angel of the Lord, 
On wing outstretched, in hands a flaming sword. 
Will stand and count each in the homing horde. 
And question every pilgrim's secret plans. 
And search into each soul as only angels 
can! 
If one doth carry in his heart the seed 
Of the great Heresy, 
A kernel of the modern Fallacy, 
If one served idols in a foreign land. 

Or kneeled to Mammon and the god of 
gold, 
Or followed Dogma's false command. 
Or worshipped harlots crude and bold, 
Or at Assimilation's hand did feed. 
Let such abstain from ent 'ring here, 
For they have much of God to fear! 
None from the money-changers ' mart, — 
None but the pure of heart. 
Whose hands are clean, 
Whose conscience is serene. 
Who hath no vain regret. 
No memory to forget, 
No self-emolument to seek, 

[62] 



APPEAL AND PROTEST 

No vengeances to wreak, — 

Let him be pioneer, 

To biiild my Temple here ! 

Thus saith the angel of the Lord, 
While standing guard o'er the homing 
horde ! 

.NTH lfi'''«n - ""D 

Who is there so faint and weak. 
Whose heart doth tremble in its fear, 
Who doth to his own vanities adhere, — 

Let him come forth and speak ! 

What man in the Diaspora hath built 

Himself a home, or who a vineyard planted. 

And who in his prosperity deems it a guilt 

To sacrifice to Israel 's cause. 

Let such by the wayside pause, 

Nor let to such the privilege be granted 

To build for Judea a new Judean State ! 
But as the vistas of all-time will ope 
To give a glimpse of God's annointed sons. 

Let future generations in their pride relate 
That those who did with this great problem 
cope 
Were men of sterling worth, — the sturdy 



[^3] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Who plowed and tilled, and sowed and reaped, 
And on the Holy Land abundance heaped. 
Aye, men and women, builders of a State, 
As shall our children in just pride relate ! 



[64] 



II. 

POEMS OF NATURE AND TRAVEL 



The Song of the Mountains 

The Song of the Mountains is a song without 
words, 

And the singer the eagle on high, 
Who, of all of the fast-flying, high-soaring birds, 

He soareth the nearest the sky. 

The high winds delight in his screech and his 

yell, 

And the sky-scaling bluffs in their turn 
Bend trebly their heads in a magical spell, 
The grace of the singer to earn. 

Far over the clouds he mates on the wing. 
And warbles and coos to his love ; 

From heaven the light if he wills can he bring, 
Or anything else from above. 

He roams with his mate through the Bange as he 
lists. 

And builds on the highest of crags ; 
The veil for his bride are the roseate mists 

Through which Phoebus his chariot drags. 

[67] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

He fears nothing earthly, he fears neither foe. 

Full knowing the height of his flight, 
Content in the day-time wherever he'll go. 

Secure in his nest in the night. 

All the Mountains delight in this song without 
words. 
That is sung by the eagle on high ; 
Well assured, if not they, then this bird of all 
birds 
Will succeed once in piercing the sk>-. 



[68] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 



The Lure of the West 

I 
THE LORELEI OF THE PRAIRIES 

A Woman in purple came on the horizon, 

With a veil of dark blue all encircling her 
frame, 
And I knew her as soon as she cast her great eyes 
on 
My face, and I shuddered to thmk of her 
name. 

But she lifted her voice and the echoes resounded 
From prairie to prairie across her domain, 
From the deep starry vault the sweet music re- 
bounded. 
And good was her singing of this, her re- 
frain : 

(Lorelei sings). 

And the golden-silver notes are ringing, ringing, 
ringing, 

[69] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

And my words like dancing motes are singing, 
singing, singing, 
Singing, ringing golden chimes, 
Of the fabulous golden mines. 
And of regions of the bless 'd, 
Where all find peace and love and rest. 

Oh, Lorelei, my Lorelei, 

I am thy ready victim. 
But leash thy beast of death or else. 

In mercy, pray restrict him; 
For, though within thy whirlpool caught, 

There is no need denying, 
'Tis the sweetest thing on earth 

To hear thy music, — dying. 

II 

DELUSION 

O'er the echoless wastes of the steel-eolored 
prairie 
The twilight descended on far-reaching 
wing, 
When a phantom-like outline, etherial, airy, 
Like some strange illusion, an ill-defined fairy, 
Stepped out like a witch from a magical 
ring. 

[70] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 

With quivering finger it pointed me onward, 

To where the red sun in the clouds dis- 
appears ; 
With gestures fantastic it pointed me toward 
The gold-land of sunshine that lies ever forward, 
The land that is stranger to sorrow and 
tears. 

The heat rose in waves on the blue forms of 
evening. 
And the tall, swaying grass seemed a deep, 
surging sea ; 
Dark night in all mystery came, scarcely 

breathing. 
The elfin-like fairy was leaving, receding, 

Then vanished with laughter and sinister 
glee. 

Ill 

EUREKA 

Eureka, I have found it 

In the open public mart ; 
I have found it and I bound it 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

To my sore and bleeding heart ! 
All my life I sought it, sought it, 

In the mountain-fastness, there, 
Till I wrought it, as I thought it, 

With my bleeding hands and bare, 
From the granite rocks out yonder. 
The gray, clammy mines beyond there, 

That have proved themselves a snare ! 
Peaks on peaks I climbed and clambered, 

Mountain-ranges I went o'er. 
Fording streams and lakes unnumbered, 

Knocking at the golden door. 
In the arctic Klondike region. 

In the heat of tropic climes. 
In the mines whose names are legion, 

I have harked for golden chimes. 
Gold I sought in stream and freshet. 

Gold I sought deep in the earth. 
But I could not, could not guess it, 

That of gold there is great dearth. 
Am I mad ? Why, no ! I found it 

In the open public mart ; 
Gold it is ! I found and bound it 

To my sore and bleeding heart. 

[72] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 

IV 
THE LAKE OF THE VALLEY OF NAVAJO 

There is a valley where the setting sun 

Looks green with envy in the evening dusk, 

Whilst in a network magically spun 

The prairie weaves its dark, vermillion husk. 

Steel-blue reflects the far and distant field 

That looks like some mysterious, magic lake, 

As if it were on purpose ill concealed. 

Where wayfarers seek their burning thirst 
to slake. 

Fiercely the heat beats down for many a day 
Upon the sandy plain and prairie land, 

Severely trying all upon the way 

To wealth and gold across the burning sand. 

Great is their thirst but gi*eater still their hope. 
For surely, surely now the lake is found; 

And still, that phantom-lake ahead, they grope 
On blindly o'er the dark, retreating ground. 

For days they seek until at last they fall 

Amid the skulls and bones the sun has 
bleached, 

[72] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Like many others answering the Call, 

With that mysterious prairie-lake i 
reached. 

V 

TO THE LORELEI OF THE WEST 

Sing, Lorelei, sing me to sleep, 
Call, Lorelei, call from the deep ; 
Cradled in fungus-beds down in the sea. 
Sing thy sweet lullaby, sing it to me. 

Truce to all strife, you will say, 
Peace with the end of the day ; 
"Life is but fever and pain" 
Is thy recurrent refrain ; 
Death is but slumber and rest, 
Balsam and balm to the breast. 
Respite and peace for the soul, 
As the eternities roll. 

Sing, Lorelei, sing me to sleep, 
Call, Lorelei, as though from the deep ; 
Cradled in prairie-grass, blue as the sea, 
Sing thy sweet lullaby, sing it to me. 



[74] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 



An Ode to the West 

Ye winds of the west 
Whose abode is a nest 

In the wilds of the snow-covered moun- 
tains, 
Your wings bring good cheer 
To the haunts of the deer, 

And the field of perpetual fountains. 

Where Ocean and Tide 
Ebb and flow to the wide 

And unreachable circling horizon, 
And Cynthia, Queen 
Of the heavens serene. 

With a sweet tender smile keeps her eyes 
on 

The sea-faring sails. 
While the moonlight avails 

To their haven in safety to guide them ; 
There serve the winds well 
As the canvass they swell. 

While the sailor-lads laughingly chide 
them. 

[75] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

But ye of the west 
Never know the behest 

Of the slave-driving, wind-working 
master ; 
Then why, will ye say. 
Both by night and by day. 

Do ye blow ever harder and faster? 

The winds then spoke and said : 
' ' We are the living and the dead, 
The flame of life, the breath of fire, 
The soul of passion and desire. 
All evil and all virtue known 
Are we, and we are that alone. 
We blow our breath on hill and dale, 
And Nature rises fresh and hale ; 
Again we blow our icy breath. 
And sward and leaf go down in death. 
Out from the caves of mountain-height 
We bring the shadow, bring the light ; 
We carry seed to barren lands, 
And render fertile desert sands, 
As 'er the globe, like Phoebus ' car, 
We travel near and travel far. 
We roar and clamor, whistle shrill. 
And then like zephyrs, gentle, still, 

[76] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 

We purr and murmur and caress, 
And some we curse and some we bless. ' ' 

ye streams of the west 
That arise on the crest 

Of the sky-lifting earth-elevation, 
Through canyons ye creep, 
And ye gambol and leap. 

And disport since the planet's creation. 

Away on the plains 

They are harnessed in chains, 

And compelled unto labors incessant; 
Each murmuring rill 
In the work of a mill 

Is becoming inured and senescent. 

Or else in the towns 

As they flow to the downs, 

They are subject to human contention ; 
The}^ lave and they clean. 
And they gather and glean, 

And they serve every human invention. 

But ye of the west 
Never know the behest 

Of the slave-driving, stream-working 
master ; 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Then why, will ye say, 
Both by night and by day. 

Do ye flow ever faster and faster ? 

"Truth eternal is our source, 

As we roll our mountain course. 

Purity and virtue rare 

We distribute in the air, 

When we crash and splash and dash 

In our disposition rash, 

Wild and wilful, down the steep 

Rugged ladder of the deep. 

Till precipitous we leap 

To the bed of the ravine 

Where the stars alone are seen. 

Crystal, crystal, crystal sheen 

Is reflected in our green, 

While the skies of sapphire hue 

Are reflected in our blue. 

Silver nuggets, bars of gold, 

Wealth and treasures yet untold. 

Such as sun and stars unfold. 

We have never yet denied ; — " 

This is what the streams replied. 

[78] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 

O ye mountains so high 
As to challenge the sky, 

And to challenge creation in beauty, 
So grand is the sight 
In the play of the light 

As to make admiration a duty. 

For when in the dawn 
Of a grey, misty mom, 

All your vastness but dimly emerges, 
You seem like a dream 
With the hint of a gleam 

Of some thought that through memory 
surges. 

Or when the first ray 
Of the oncoming day 

On your sky-line the snow-caps discovers, 
It dances and plays 
As on silvery trays, 

And caressingly lingers and hovers. 

And later the sun, 
When his course is begim. 

Crowns your brow with a halo of glory, — 
A millon of gems 

[79] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

In your gold diadems 

Is the daily and hourly story. 

As twilight descends 

On the mountains and lends 

Altogether a weirdness fantastic, 
The shadows trip fast, 
Like the ghosts from the past. 

Unobtrusive and silent and plastic. 

Deep purple the clouds 
That form funeral shrouds 

For the sun that goes westward aroaming ; 
And weave on the heads 
Of the mountains the threads 

Of the purpling gold veil of the gloaming. 

A hand pearly grey 
Tolls the end of the day, 

And the echoes find silver companions 
O'er hill, over dale. 
In the mountain and vale, 

In the gorges and whispering canyons. 

Then, seized with the pow'r 
Of God's purposeful hour, 

[So] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 

All-uneonseious I take up my lyre, 
And wrest from its chords 
All the landscape affords, 

All its sweetness, its beauty, its fire ! 



[8i] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



An Ode to the Alps 

Before the world was old in years, 
Before the sea was circumscribed, 
When first our globe among celestial spheres 

Its marvelous elliptic course described. 
Then ye, O heaven-born heights, out of deep 

chaos rose, 
The Prince of Cimean darkness to depose. 
And, through innumerable, violent throes. 

Give birth to order and eternal light. 
So that the earth in her illimitable woes. 

When fiercely the elements with all their' 
might 
Against each other strove. 
And fire and water drove 
About her face through centuries of night. 
At last out of great wrong obtained some right. 
And for her dreadful pains some sweet repose. 
Then ye, O matchless heights, in all your glory 

came, 
A living song, a Paean to His Name, 
And with your loftiest peak inscribed the Word 

[82] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 

Which ye at birth in fear and trembling heard, 
The word of destiny, 
Of all futurity. 
How it shall fare with men and this fair earth, 
From its inception to its very end ; 
Inscribed it with your pinnacles on high 
Upon the zenith of the sky, 
Though who is there of such superior birth 
That can your characters decipher or 
Unlock your heart, your secret place explore, 
And to your jagged lines a meaning lend ? 
Perchance your snows have covered up some sin 
Of what once was or else what might have been ! 
Perhaps your glaciers hide, Oh, many a deed 
Of some great infamy. 
Some world-wide tragedy. 
And so are loth to vanish and display 

What to your shame the world might read, 

Your skeleton sketches in the open day. 
Ah, no ! Ye shall no thoughts like these inspire 
Within the bard whose ever-flaming fire 
Must east its warmth upon your loftiest crest, 
Just as with evening comes the Alpine glow, 
When in the valleys long the shadows fall, 
Responding to a most mysterious call. 
And rises to your heights from down below, 

[83] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

At the great Alchemist, the Sun's behest. 

Surely untrodden peaks of all things best 

Preserve their purity of virgin snow. 

And when some lonely wanderer, to forestall 
A worse disaster, bivouacs on some peak 

At night, and spreads his tent upon a sheet 
of ice. 
He'll hear the snow-caps to each other speak. 

As if by some mysterious device ; 
And if he neither sleeps nor is awake. 
But harks attentively and long. 
He'll hear this burden of their song, 
At that frail moment when the day must break : 
' ' Ever since a God has been 
We have never tasted sin, 
And all evil passions are 
From us very, very far. 
We are pure and we are true. 
As an a^ure sky is blue; 
As the soul is stainless white, 
As the Sim is always bright. 
So are we both pure and true, 
As the sky absorbs the dew. 
Angels only visit us. 
Angels only tread on us, 
Ajid if some of a lower race 

[84] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 

Will not, can not know their place, 

Then for every day they try 

To attain us they shall lie 

An Eon in an unknown grave. 

In some chasm, or in a glacier-cave." 



[8S3 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



An Ode to the Leman 

Blue are thy waters and blue is the sky, 

As the fair day advances from morning till eve, 
Where life is worth living, where no one may 
grieve, 

For the joy and the peace on the sea and on high. 

So calm is thy surface, so peaceful thy breast, 
O thou wonderful lake full of beauty and 

charm. 
That all men grow unmindful of ill or of harm, 

And find on thy bosom their haven of rest. 

A haven of rest and a harbour of calm 

Is thy quiet expanse of deep, shimmering blue ; 
Rich treasures of hope that all evils subdue, 

Or a river of healing, an ocean of balm : 

A retreat for the weary, those laden with care, 
An asylum, a sanctuary, true to its name, 
Where many a suffering wanderer came. 

And whither yet pilgrims for ages will fare. 

For when on thy waters at eve I embark, 

In magnificent silence that reigns all supreme. 
With the sun past the mountains still sending 
a beam 

[86] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 

To disqualify night and illumine the dark ; — 
The great mountains surround thee in purple 
array ; 
The hills all around thee, full verdured with 

green, 
Still retaining some glow of the shimmering 
sheen 
That is loth to depart with the slow-dying day, 
Bend their heads in full reverence, knowing quite 
well 
That thy splendor is matchless, thy charm un- 
surpassed, 
Then I feel and can know how is nature en- 
clasped 
And held bondman and slave in thy magical 

spell ! 
In far ages agone, when creation was new, 

To behold thy great beauty, from east and 

from west 
Came the Alps and the Jura ; green slopes and 
high crest 
Of precipitous granite, thee-worshipping, drew 
To thy shores, all-amazed, and forever remained, 
As if torn from their purpose, their calling 

forgot. 
By their love of thee only held down to this 
spot, — 

[87] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Quite content to remain thus eternally chained. 
While their villas and forests smile into thy face, 
As a beautiful maiden smiles into a glass, 
And behold in return, to each green blade of 
grass, 
Their own perfect image returned with thy grace. 
While the sun's setting rays in all shades paint 
the sky, 
And illumine the mountainous peaks with their 

glow; 
The day hovers high, while the night is below, 
The sweet zephyrs murmur and utter a sigh. 



[88] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 



Schreckhorn 

True to thy name, monument of eld, 
When light first dawned primeval man beheld 
In thee a terror and an object all 
Too frightful, ever able to appall 
His infant mind, while he accounted thee 
His lord, his god, his dread divinity. 
For when upon thy peaks perchance he came. 
Scarcely less wild than thou or than the game 
Which he with club or axe in hand pursued. 
His speechless vows he many times renewed 
To be thy abject slave forever hence. 
And raise an altar unto thee, if thence 
Thou wouldst permit him graciously to go 
And join, unhurt, his clothesless spouse below. 
E 'en now as I ascend thy dreadful heights, 
Who through these centuries have gained some 

rights, 
I cannot help but feel the dread he felt 
When he, as I, in open awe had knelt 
Upon thy shaggj^ brow and feared thee much, 
For thy forbidden crevices are such 

[89] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

That even here are seldom to be found, 

As if the mountains to the very ground 

Were cleft, down to the earth's concentric core, 

That surely lost were he forevermore 

Who made some foul misstep, or missed his hold, 

Then measured the abyss, a depth untold ; — 

A sacrifice upon thy altar he. 

Attesting thus thy dread divinity ! 



[90] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 



The Mythen 

What dreams are you dreaming, 

Inaccessible height, 
When the starlight is streaming 

This long summer night? 

When the clouds with their glory 

Encircle your crest, 
What wonderful story 

Is locked in your breast? 

In the twilight of morning 
The shadows profound, 

Your great height adorning, 
Descend to the ground ; 

Or when in the eve-tide 

Dark spirits of old. 
That silently grieve, hide 

In your chambers untold ; 

[91] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Then tell me what think you, 

Inscrutable height ! 
Can centuries bring you 

No shadow of light ? 



[92] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 



Mont Blanc 

Real Monarch of the Alps, how proudly grand, 
Without compeer, thou 'mong the clouds dost 

stand ! 
Mute as a Sphynx, yet eloquent indeed 
For them who can thy mountain-cipher read. 
To those hard toilers who thy seraes reach 
Thou art indeed quite prodigal of speech ! 
Thou art the loadstone attracting human kind, 
For such vast grandeur none may elsewhere find ; 
Dazzled and stunned is every human eye, 
So none can thy supremacy deny. 
Thy feet are deep set in the planet's heart; 
Of hardest granite is thy every part; 
Thy crest thrice daily kisses the azure sky ; 
God rests on thee His never- failing eye ! 
Crowned with the purest crown He can bestow, — 
A limitless expanse of virgin snow, — 
With rubies set and many a precious stone, 
While ermine drapes thy adamantine throne. 
Thou art indeed the chosen of the world. 
Holding the flag of peace eternally unfurled. 



[93] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



The Lake of Lucerne 

An emerald by rocks enclosed, 

Or verdant fields with flocks disposed, 

So is this beauteous star-shaped lake, 

"Where gladly come their thirst to slake 

The swift-foot chamois from the heights 

At dujsk o' morn or end o' nights. 

The star that twinkles in the face 

Of this grand lake mistakes its place. 

And thinks itself in heav'n above, 

Immersed in God's eternal love. 

Whereas the mountains dream and sleep 

Forever in this quiet deep, 

So deeply shadowed in the lake 

They will not, can not, dare not wake! 

What think they and what dream they so, 

When strangely lit by Alpine glow. 

Or when the shadows come and go ? 

Alas ! I cannot, cannot know ! 

Each blade of grass within its sphere 

Is glad to be a native here. 

For it is always twice on hand, 

[94] 



NATURE AND TRAVEL 

Within the deep and on the land. 

While high above the snow-peaks smile 

Through many a narrow, deep defile, 

And look into the waters green, 

That also there they might be seen, — 

Not all content to pierce the sky, 

But in the emerald waters lie, 

And temper their too-dazzling white 

With green and soft prismatic light. 

The land pushed out its slender arms. 

As if to grasp the watery charms 

In an embrace so well and sure 

As shall for centuries endure. 

And e'en the sky, so proud and cold. 

The clouds that highest peaks enfold. 

Both dip into the waters oft 

And then retire again aloft, 

To weep or smile, as they deem best. 

Upon this lake by all the graces blessed. 



[9S] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



Ships at Sea 

A SHIP afloat on a raging sea, 

With waves on waves that obstruct the sky, 
And never a calming breath from the lee. 

And never a hopeful ray from on high. 

A soul adrift on a desert sea, 

With doubt and fear all encompassed 'round. 
And never a hopeful sight from the lee, 

And never the breath of a human sound. 

The WHENCE and the WHITHEE all un- 
known, 

The WHY as mysterious as night is dark ; 
And the fruit of the toil what the wind has sown. 

And the hope and the gain but a dying spark. 



[96] 



III. 

LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCEL- 
LANEOUS POEMS 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 



Sanctuary 

(TO C. D.) 

I RETURN from the battle, all seared and scarred, 
"Wounded to death and bleeding at every vein, 
Pursued by the hounds of war 
Unto the very door 
Of the holy temple, the sacred fane. 
That stands a bulwark, bolted and barred. 
Against oppressors, however hard, 
Against all evil, to lead and guard 
The weary soldier, the stricken knight, 
Through flame and smoke, through stumbling 

night. 
Where all who come find sanctuary, 
However low their station be. 
Oh, fierce was the combat and terrible the strife. 
With the enemy surrounding on every side, 
Where no quarters were asked and none 

were given, 
But like fighting devils each of us have 
striven 
O'er the corpse of his opponent merciless to 
ride 

[99] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

And crush out to the last the panting, struggling 

life. 
It was a battle not 
Of brawn and strength begot, 
Nor a physical struggle in its true sense. 
But such as evil spirits wage 

Against the powers of light and truth. 
Making of virtue a foul offence. 

Of all that's noble a burning shame; 
'Twas a conflict in which the gods engage, 
Making earth hideous and uncouth. 
To vindicate their highest claim. 
And boldly did I ride, 
My charging steed astride. 

Into the cohorts of darkness, the armies of sin, — 
For all the windmills are not fallen yet, nor are 
The Don Quixotes dead, — and so I thought that 

somewhere far. 
Far off, some compensating goodness may have 

been 
Reserved for the poor Knight Errant when the 
battle's won. 
For out of the deepest depths of hell 
I heard the groaning tocsin bell, 
Heard the sad, the mad farewell, 
As of a thousand waterfalls ! 

[100] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

And to the rescue all my faculties have gone, 
As if responding to an imperative behest. 
Yea, all my theories I put to test, 

To prove them all and prove them false ! 
For I have cast my bread upon the waters, 

And to the drowning man held forth my hand, 
I descended into Avemus ' bituminous quarters. 
And snatched from hell-fire ten thou- 
sand souls : 
The cripple made I whole, 
And to the lost I gave a soul ! 

By the side of the publican and sinner did I 
stand. 
And said "my brother" and "my sister" when 
The world despised them and derided me ! 
But for my good came ill, and for my bread 
a stone, 
A curse for my blessing, and for my pain 
disgrace ! 
As down an Alpine mountain rolls 
An avalanche into an icy sea 

Below, or like a thunderbolt, so came 
The furies of discontent to censure and 
to blame. 
To destroy my idols and efface 
All that is good, and plant all that is base, 

[lOl] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

So all my great philosophies are overthrown. 
And now as there is no longer hope, 
Within the world 's wide scope, 
Of recompense of God or gratitude of men. 
With my last spent breath. 
Pursued by the shadows of death, 
Unto thy sheltering wing I flee 
For Sanctuary. 
Some saving grace, a pitying look, 

A gentle touch, a loving word, 

And then I care not if I never heard 
Again man's speech, the babbling brook. 

The whispering stream, the warbling bird ; — 
All that I love, all that I prize. 
May vanish like a thin disguise. 
So long I find retreat in thee. 
And in thy heart my sanctuary ! 



[102] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 



Salve Dea! 

Hail, Goddess of redeeming virtue, hail ! 
Thy glorious healing gifts will never fail 
The lowliest creature of the living God ! 
Those eating dust and mingling with the sod 
Their tears of anguish and of bitter grief ; 
Those calling vainly, crying for relief 
From soul-destroying evils that will not 
Abate ; those scorched by fire, or fanned by hot 
Hell-blasts in the depths of error or remorse ; 
Those smitten with disease or with the force 
Of man's ingratitude; — and oh, all those 
Who were betrayed because they did repose 
Full confidence in all nor did impose 
The slightest toll for their good deeds, — poor 

souls, 
Led by a thousand hopes, lured by a thousand 

goals, 
Torn from their moorings, drifting on every sea, 
Blown by every wind, refused at every lee ; 
Oh, Goddess of redeeming Love, once let 
On these unfortunates thy sunbeams set, 

[103] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

And all the joy and peace and rest and calm 

Will settle in their breasts like healing balm 

Upon a sore and bleeding wound. As shades 

Steal softly on the evenfall, when maids 

Weave garlands in the thickness of a wood, 

While softly hums the King of Solitude 

His favorite tune, or as a gentle breeze 

Calms down a storm upon the raging seas, 

So thy beneficent influence descends. 

Like dew from heaven, and in mercy sends 

Into each aching heart a ray of joy, 

A wish to grow and build but not destroy, 

So that all souls, by evil erst obsessed, 

Find peace and good-will and everlasting rest. 

Oh, Goddess of redeeming Love, I pray 
Abide with me forever from this day. 
For like unto the music of the spheres. 
Or as the starry sky to which adheres, 
A faint pink stria of the northern lights. 
As the Aurora in the arctic nights, 
As the great mysteries of heaven 
Which ne'er by mortal gaze were riven, 
Thou art to me a prize above all worth. 
By which I'll scale to heav'n, or conquer all the 
earth. 



[104] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 



God and Man 

A PARABLE 

A CHILD was playing on an ancient shore, 
And built his youthful hopes upon the sand. 
Transparent shells and pebbles of all shades 
He gather 'd, and with painful patience made 
Himself a little house. Then, wondering 
At his creation wherewithal he was 
Well pleased, he looked exultant, and in prayer 
His lips besought a blessing from his God. 

Thereat a gentle wind arose and blew 
The structure down, and from the placid sea 
A rolling wavelet came and carried off 
The pebbles and the shells. Which when the 

child 
Observed, he went home sighing and in tears. 

In that same land a man reared up his home. 
And made it happy for his wife and kin. 
Eight healthy children played about his hearth 
That warmed the cheerful chambers with its glow. 
Mirth, song and dance cheered every gladsome 
heart, 

[^05] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

And cakes and viands ever filled the board. 
His ground did yield him plenty, while the bins 
Were overfilled with grain. The pens were full, 
And in the stalls the cattle multiplied. 
Then from the fullness of his heart the man 
Thanked his Creator, and in prayer craved 
That peace may bless this house. 

The which when done. 
Dearth settled on the land and hunger, all 
The cattle died, no sheep were left, the grain 
Did rot within the seed. Then sickness came 
And bore the children off ; the mother soon 
Died of her grief. Then with a heavy heart 
The man sought out his solitary bed. 

There in that kingdom was a mighty king 
Who swayed his sceptre over half the world. 
Great cities were in his dominion, while 
Great sea-ports were upon his shores. His were 
The richest treasures in the land, and from 
All quarters he of tithe and tax received. 
Commerce and industry to full extent 
Beneath him prosper 'd, and his people were 
Full satisfied and in their station pleased. 
Then this great king erected monuments 
And arches to commemorate his reign, 

[io6] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

And order 'd roads and bridges to be built 
And strongholds, towers and castles, that he may 
His empire strengthen and extend the more. 
Then when he saw that all was fair, and he 
Was overwhelmed with joy, he thanked his God 
For His great bounty and in prayer invoked 
A blessing for his kingdom and himself. 

The which when done, a pestilence fell on 
The land and many people died. Whole towns 
Were desolate, and cities empty stood. 
In which distress, with fire and sword and war's 
Great plague, barbaric hordes arrived and took 
Possession of the luckless realm. The king, 
By sorrow bent, hid in the secret caves 
Among the hills and led a hermit's life. 

That hour the spirit of God did manifest 
Itself to the bereaved king and through 
A vision of the night, when on all men 
Sleep f alleth, He thus spake to him and said : 

' ' Because thou hast forgot the Kingdom that 
Is not of earth, and hearkend 'st not unto 
The Voice that calleth toward greater life. 
But in thy earthly realm thou though 'st to find 
The limit, and thy rule the rule of God, 
Thy pow'r the equal of His power, thy 

[107] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Arm His arm, thy will His, be therefore all 
Thy days bereft of pow 'r, and to thine own 
Shalt never come. Thy people shall be slaves 
To strangers, and thy land a subject state. 
So that henceforth thon mayst acknowledge thy 
Creator and a greater pow'r than thine." 

At that same hour the Spirit of God ap- 
peared 
Before the man who mourned his adverse lot, 
And in a nightly vision spake and said : 

' ' Because thou didst consider but thyself. 
And held'st thy welfare paramount, but all 
Things else thereto subservient, nor didst 
Bethink of others' lives or comforts, nor 
Of widows, orphans, or the homeless poor, 
Be therefore robbed of all thy wealth and kin ; 
The earth be fruitless in thy hands, thy folds 
In death shall multiply, and thine own days 
Be cheerless, rayless, colorless and cold." 

At that same hour the Spirit of God ap- 
peared 

In dream before the youth whose hopes were 
ruined 

Upon the sandy beach, and to him said : 

[io8] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

"Since young and inexperienced thou hast 
been, 
And innocent in thy play, I shall uphold 
Thee in thy righteousness, and will make strong 
Thy feeble arm. Into thy soaring soul 
I'll breathe the genius of invention that 
Will herald thee a leader among men. 
Then every day wilt thou create but to 
Destroy the next, to prove the vanity 
Of men. Then wilt thou know that not on earth 
Is found Perfection, but on high, in God!" 



[109] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



The Angel's Feast 
A PARABLE 

The King came to the feast arrayed in gold 
And purple, in full state with retinue 
Attendant, thinking his great Chamberlain 
Presiding at the feast, as advertised. 
And he it seemed in truth who at the head 
Of the assemblage sat distributing 
High honors to all guests, according their 
Degree and station, and when he the King 
Espied he rose straightway advancing. 
Bowing thrice and kissing thrice the regal hem, 
Then bade him to the seat of honor at 
His right. 

There lived an only son 
By whom the King hoped to attain the height 
Of earthly power, and whose youthful brow 
He dreamed to see crowned ruler of the world. 
He set aside for him great stores of wealth 
And treasures fabulous, for well he knew, 
Or hoped at least, that these would multiply 

[iiol 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

Into a countless measure. Thus was great 
The King's chagrin, and greater still his wrath, 
When on another road his son's feet walked. 
And when, sad-eyed and tearful, he looked not 
For glory upon earth but far above. 

The old King then cast off his only son, 
And banished him beyond his realm, his name 
Nor speaking nor allowing anyone 
The mention of, but punishing with death 
Whomever so his ruler disobeys. 

Hence at this feast none dared the slightest 
hint 
Of reconcilement, or the pleasure mar 
Of the festivities by reference to 
The banished one. 

Yet when the cups were full, 
And high the note of mirth resounded, came. 
None could say whence, or how, a mendicant. 
Clad all in black, who at the door, with hand 
Outstretched, with lowly and submissive mien. 
Stood muttering these enigmatic words : 
"For those much poorer than myself I gather, 
Though of me to receive are none too rich. ' ' 

[III] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

And when the Chamberlain espied him he 
In haste arose and, walking tow'rd the door, 
Full seven times most reverently bowed, 
And seven times he kissed the hermit's robe, 
Thus saying ; ' ' Lord, the earth is blesse'd in Thee, 
And Heav'n is purer for Thy living Light. 
May it please Thee, Master, to adorn 
My humble board, and with Thy radiance grace 
My poor festivities." 

Which saying, he 
The mendicant conducted to the head 
Of the glittering table, and his own 
Seat yielded unto Him, himself then 
Seating to the left. 

Which when the King beheld, 
He rent his clothes, and smote the table with 
His sword, while on his brow the night-black 

scowl 
Spoke louder of his wrath than aught could 

speak, 
Although with words of thunder he consigned 
To death the man who dared his banished son 
Thus honor and receive. 

[112] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

"My servant, though 
The trustiest and beloved the most, is not 
Exempt from my immutable decree, 
And though," so said the King, "the earth and 

heav 'n 
May change, my law remains unchangeable. 

But when the ruler's henchmen came to lay 
Their hands upon the man condemned, they 

found 
Him not, but only saw his vacant chair. 

Then knew they all that the great Chamber- 
lain 
Was but an holy angel in disguise. 

.C]^n^ ^:s hv mm 

(And a Spirit passed before me; the hair of my 
itood up). Job, iv., 15. 



One long eternity came to an end. 

Another was upon the way, 

Comprising not a single day, 
For now the cold, black Sun, extinct, could send 

Into dark space no faintest ray. 
Freed from the iron rule at last which bound 
Her to her lord and master, 

[M3] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

The Earth rushed madly through immensity, 
Forming close friendship with the worlds 
around, 
And bringing fresh disaster, 

Like some wild thing with a wild propen- 
sity, 
On all opposing spheres. 
Colliding oft, she brushed 
The orbs aside, and crushed 
The smaller ones to dust ; 

As when a spectre black appears, 
Aflame with rage and lust, 
And terrorizes all within its reach, 
So came the Earth, through some unguarded 
breach 
In Night 's dark battlements, — 

Charred, burned, seared, a great revolving 

coal, 
Out of some hideous Cosmic hole, 
Toward no definite goal, 

A maddening terror to the universe, 
A black-plumed page before the planetary 
hearse, 
A herald from the Plutonian settlements. 
All life as life is known was long since dead, 
The seas evaporated, while the air 

["4] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

Snapped in one sheet of flame, destroying all. 
The Moon's black skeleton, no longer led 

By a restraining hand, at last could dare 
An independent course, — an independent 
fall! 
The moon, so long the earth 's concomitant, 
So long her constant ornament. 
Chafing and yearning underneath the yoke. 
At last her ancient obligations broke. 
And, at a hyperbolic tangent hurled. 
Became an independent world; 
Revolving in the hemispheres alone. 
Though cold and lifeless as a stone. 
And as a wild stampeding herd 

Breaks from its prison loose, 

Without a reason or excuse. 
Save that one common impulse stirred 

And spurned them on to liberty or woe. 
So at the first rebellious word. 
Unspoken but inferred. 
The whilom planetary system ceased 

Around the once illustrious sun to go, 
But with a speed a thousandfold increased 

Precipitously led a fearful rout, 

And wander 'd, comet-like, in error and in 
doubt, 

Each separately the universe about. 

[115] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Creation once again was at its ebb, 
With everything entangled in a web 
Of hopeless ruin and ceaseless strife, 
Which made impossible all forms of life. 
And Havoc held supremest sway 
On the once famous Milky Way, 
Dispersing to the farthest realms of Night 

The star-dust of the stars unformed. 
Destroying every particle of light, 
And driving the nebula before the wind, 

Decrepit and deformed. 
Like some lost souls that hopelessly have sinned. 
The myriad stars were dead, extinct, 

And in the inky firmaments 
No single object seemed distinct ; 

The shroud-like, dark habiliments 
Of night eternal all the worlds enveloped, 
While Chaos his vast rule again developed, 
Making great ruin his greatest joy. 
So all the universe he may destroy. 
And in that thick Cimmerian darkness flit 

My own imconscious Self, 

A hopeless, buffeted elf, 
From the eternal, into the infinite. 

Eternities now mark the day 

Since in a form of clay 

My soul imprisoned lay. 

[ii6] 



LYRICS, PAEABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

VEROACH AL PONI YACHLOV; 
Then a Spirit, passed before me. 
It stood still, as if it would restore me 

To a momentary consciousness. 
Unspeakable terror held me fast 
While this strange apparition passed, 

Out from vacuity and into emptiness, 
Upon far-reaching wing, 
A solitary thing, 
Above the surface of the waters floating, 
And with its wings the surface smoting, 

Calling upon Chaos to give up 

From his vast realm a single drop, 
Wherewith a new Creation to begin 
Out of a primitive origin. 
And then a red flash glimmered far below, — 
A very distant crimson glow. 
Accompanied by detonations loud and fierce. 
Just as two darkling, wandering spheres 
Collided with such fearful force 

That shattered one orb into meteoric hail. 

The new-made earths in future to assail. 
And sent the other on its course 

Of fire and life, and love and hate, 

And every planetary state, — 
A world created out of Death 
By virtue of the still, creative breath. 

[117] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



A Snake Song 

Light green and heliotrope, 

Bright red and blue, 
All woven in a rope. 

Gold shinging through; 
This is thy magic coat, 

Thy beauty this, 
Child of an age remote, 

Stranger to bliss. 

Rock thee and go to sleep, 

Child of the wild. 
Let chimes of music keep 

Thee undefiled ; 
For thee let sunshine be 

All unrestrained, 
Freedom and liberty 

Thine have remained. 

Let venom cease to make 

Thy life so sad. 
And let thy sharp fangs break 

Learn to be glad ; 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOL'R 

Truce to thy enmity, 

Truce to thy strife, 
Peace and security 

Enter thy life. 

Light green and heliotrope, 

White, red and blue. 
Symbol of life and hope. 

Constant and true; 
Throw off thy magic coat, 

In the sun's light. 
Child of an age remote, 

Child of the night. 



["9] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



A Parisian Lay 

Pakis breathes and Paris lives, 
Life and jo}^ she ever gives ; 
When her sons are far away, 
Then they have a jolly day. 
Paris first and Paris last, — 
Come what may when life is past ! 

Is there greater bliss than this, 

When a maiden grants a kiss ? 

All in heaven or in hell 

Is not worth that magic spell ! 

Then let priests preach what they will, 

Ruby lips cannot be still ! 

Nectar for the gods, but mine 
Shall be women, song and wine ! 
Sing a song of woman 's praise. 
Glorify her in your lays, 
For she rules the earth and sea, 
Gods and stars, and you and me ! 

[1 20] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

Paris breathes and Paris lives, 
Life and joy she ever gives ; 
When her sons are far away, 
Then they have a jolly day. 
Paris first and Paris last, — 
Come what may when life is past ! 



[121] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



Ships of the Sea 

I 

Darkness and Night and the interminable Sea, 

Hurricanes, tempests, far off from the lee : 

'Mid thunder and lightning on mountainous 

waves 
Two ships pass each other like ghosts from the 
graves. 
Then darkness again and the night, 
And the sea in its furious might. 

II 

Darkness and Life and the sea of distress. 
Error, confusion no tongue may express ; 
'Mid terror and anguish on billows of flame 
Two lives pass each other like pawns in a game. 
Then darkness again and the sea 
That affords not a sheltering lee. 



122] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 



To 

AN ACROSTIC 

Celestial light streamed forth most gloriously 
Below and above God's wondrous throne when 

He, 
Of creatures beautiful, created thee. 
Delicate and mellow sang the angel choir 
Resplendent hallelujahs as the fire 
Of the illustrious sun illumed the sky, 
While calling hosts in imison did cry 
Unto the Deity hosanna, hail ! 
And far o'er earth and heaven did prevail 
The marvelous intelligence of thy birth. 
And to the sun and stars was known thy worth, 
As a^ some oriental shrine a prize 
Is held most sacred by a million eyes. 
By just as many eyes observed, when 
Providence thy soul sent down to men, 
T/iou cam'st, a gift from heav'n, a pearl most 

rare. 
Chiseled and formed most perfectly and fair, 
By an the Graces bless 'd, thyself a Grace, 

[123] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

Pure love the charm of thy fair, Grecian face ; 
Of all mterminable blessings thou 
Takest precedence, as all men will allow. 
My heart's balm ever, and my refuge now. 



To find the name in this acrostic, count one letter from left 
to right for each succeeding line to the seventh line, beginning 
with the first letter of the first line, second letter of the second 
line, etc., from the eighth line count backwards to the left in 
the same way, one letter less for each succeeding line, to the 
fourteenth line, then back again to the right one additional 
letter for each line following to the end. 



[124] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 



"C'Est Moin Qui Te Ka Lave." 

IT WAS I WHO WASHED FOR YOU), 

' ' C 'est moin qui te ka lave, 
Passe, raccommode : 
Ye te nef he disoue 
Ou mette moin derho — 
Yche moin assous boiias moin ; — 
Laplie te ka tombe ; — 
Lefan moin assous tete moin ! 
Doudoux, ou m'abandonne ! 
Moine pa ni pesonne pou soigne moin." 

It was I who washed for you, 

Mended, ironed, worked at night, 
Loved too much and loved too true, 

When you put me out of sight — 
Late at night you put me out, 

With my child upon my breast ! 
And I wander still about, 

While the wind gives me no rest ! 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

This straw mattress on my head 
Is my poor and only bed ! 
Must I, love, abandoned be! 
Who is there to care for me ? 



[126] 



LYRICS, PAEABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 



'I Am Dimpled, Young and Fair. 

"Moin toutt jeine'* 

Gouos, gouos, valiant, 

Peau di ehapoti 

Ka f ai plaisi ; 

Lapeau moin 

Li bien poli ; 

Et moin ka plai 

Menm toutt nliomme grave ! ' ' 

(Translation) 

I am dimpled, young and fair, 

Round-limbed, strong and debonair. 

With sapota-skin of gold 

That is lovely to behold ; 

Sweet and ehique and good to see. 

All men love to look at me. 

* In Martinique patois. 



[127] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



Though of Silver and Gold 

Though of silver and gold I am offered great 
treasure, 

And rubies and diamonds are mine if I ask, 
Yet I find not therein either glory or pleasure, — 

The trinkets would make but a hideous mask. 

For I have for my love all the gods have created 
In one only person, a marvel to see ; 

But a look or a smile and my soul is all sated, — 
One kiss, and creation is nothing to me. 

Oh, ye wise ones of old and ye men of the present, 

I point to a parable, look and behold ! 
The silver-winged bird and the bright golden 
pheasant, 
Gave you them their silver, or gave you the 
gold? 



[128] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 



La Martinique 

La Martinique is bright and gay, 

Long live the Queen, 
'Tis well to watch her all the daj. 

Long live the Queen; 
For if you watch not day and night 
She may be captured by the spright 
That lives beyond the pale of light — 

Long live the Queen, long live the Queen. 

All eyes are on La Martinique, 

Long live the Queen, 
Because the rose is in her cheek. 

Long live the Queen; 
Her lips are like the amethyst 
That ne'er by mortal man were kissed 
Because she never kept a tryst — 

Long live the Queen, long live the Queen. 



[129] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 



Cambronne 

Cambronne, O Cambronne, 
Sweet, sweet is Cambronne ! 
See her walking in the garden, 
Begging everybody's pardon. 
Lovelier than roses far, 
Fairer than the fairest star, 
Would she kiss me? Ah, oh, nay 
Yet she whispered that I may — 
Cambronne, sweet Cambronn^ ! 



[130] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

To Hon. Simon Wolf 

(On the occasion of his 85th birthday). 

Statesman, Philosopher and Sage, 

Now crowned with the radiance of age, 

And with the glory of service to mankind, 

Richly endowed with heart and soul and mind 

So deep" and sublime, so full of love 

For beast and man below, for God above. 

Who crowded so his life with good deeds done. 

Who fought all evil and in fighting won, 

Who served his country and served it well. 

So as the gratitude of men compel. 

Let all do honor to whom honor's due, — 

We honor but ourselves in hon 'ring you ! 

For when men's deeds shall counted be in heav'n, 

And in the balance weighed, it will be given 

To you, dear Sir, defender of the Truth, 

Protector of the weak, aye, father, in sooth. 

Of countless orphans and the widowed poor. 

To you it will be given, to be sure. 

To have been a champion of Right, 



THE COVENANT AND OTHEE POEMS 

A Beacon on the embattlements of Night, 

A haven, refuge and Sanctuary 

For the oppressed in humanity, 

That all may sing in song the worth of you, 

And love and honor you as are but few. 



[132] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 



Epigrams 

I 

The clouds, though mute, 
Their own salute, 

And often meet each other; 
But people don't, 
Or can 't, or won 't, 

Salute or greet a brother. 

II 

The crow caws hoarse, 
Which is, of course, 

Its nature so to do ; 
But Nature can 
Improve on man, — 

At least on me and you. 

Ill 

The ant and bee. 
Mysteriously, 

Have learned the art of thrift; 
But none the less, 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

We must confess, 

KJiow nought of shirk or shift. 

IV 

Behold ! a star 
Is very far 

From earthly toil and woe ; 
Yet who would care 
The change to dare, 

And be a star aglow ? 

V 

The sun is bright, 
But not at night, 

And heats in summer most; 
Yet we complain, 
And call insane, 

An erring human host. 

VI 
The rain and snow 
Will come and go. 

The tides will rise and fall ; 
Yet not one man 
Pursues this plan. 

But waits till some one call. 

[134] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

VII 

A mountain lay 
Right in the way 

Of one ambitious soul ; 
But did it not, 
Then on that spot 

"Would be a fearful hole. 

VIII 

Why shall not men 
Both now and then 

Bear spots upon their name ; 
When e'en the sim 
In his daily run 

Reveals them without shame ? 

IX 

One thought that strife 
Alone was life, 

And so strove on amain ; 
But when his strength 
Was spent at length 

He saw that strife was pain. 

X 

I gave good day 

To one who passed my way ; 

[I3S] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

But he looked up, 

Then let his eyebrows drop : 
When he returned, 
His insolence I spurned; 

He thanked me then, 

And went the ways of men. 

XI 

One drop of blood, 
One grain of mud, 

A careless moment 's plan ; 
A breath of God, 
A stirring prod. 

And lo ! this is a man ! 

XII 

A fool once said 
He '11 give his head 

If hills like lambs will prance ; 
An earthquake came 
And made the same 

Like ewe-lambs hop and dance. 

XIII 
There was a sage 
In a distant age 

Who dealt in wisdom 's stock ; 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

Wherefore he starved, 
And then was carved 

Upon a marble block. 

XIV 

One mustard seed 
Filled all the need 

Of one little creeping thing; 
Yet came a foe 
With wail and woe, 

And killed it with its sting. 

XV 

A child once sought 
To know the thought 

Of older ones than he ; 
He tried and tried 
Until he died 

At the age of four score three. 

XVI 

He said his life 
Wasn 't worth a fife 

If she will not be his ; 
She proved him true 
By a fond adieu ; 

His epitaph is this : 

[137] 



THE COVENANT AND OTHER POEMS 

XVII 
Here lies a man 
Who lived his span, — 

Else would he not have died ; 
A noble youth 
Who told the truth, 

E 'en when he should have lied. ' ' 

XVIII 
''Forgive me now. 
And then I '11 vow 

You'll never have to more;" 
She meant to say, 
"Never a day 

Will you catch me as before. ' ' 

XIX 

' ' Heavens ! " she cried, 
"I never lied, — 

I only white lies tell ; ' ' 
"You're color-blind," 
Said he, "I find 

Your white as black as hell!" 

XX 

There was a man 

Who thought God 's plan 

[138] 



LYRICS, PARABLES AND MISCELLANEOUS 

Was faulty at its best ; 
The world he stalked, 
And talked and talked, 

Till he became a pest. 

XXI 

The cynic said 
The gods are dead, 

And man is lifeless dust ; 
Dust in his eye 
Gave him the lie, 

And proved that God is just. 

XXII 
A word too miich, 
Like a broken crutch, 

Is worthless at its best ; 
It proves quite oft, 
Like the clown aloft, 

A sad and cruel jest. 

XXIII 
Honor and fame 
Are not the same, 

And often dwell apart ; 
Veneer outside 
Is fame and pride, 

But honor's of the heart. 

[139] 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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